Falling I.Q.’s Reverse 20th Century Boom
If you convinced progress, linked to the passage of time, inevitably translates to intellectual flourishing you’re wrong as studies prove the rationale false.
Wide ranging research points to declining scores in I.Q. tests across highly industrialized western nations from the year 1975 upwards.
Worse still, poor environmental factors like education and a dumb-down culture has cancelled the genetic advantage of children born to high I.Q. parents, in an unprecedented turnaround compared with previous generations.
Scientists hypothesize the 20th Century intellectual boom must be offset against 20th Century I.Q. decline to get things into perspective.
The concerning results show the rapid falloff in scores in a short period of just 16 years and their drastic impact overall.
And the results are in …………………
Kiwi intelligence researcher James Flynn, observed rapid rises in intelligence quotient at a rate of about 3 IQ points per decade in the 20th century, but his research suggests those heady boom days are long over.
An analysis of some 730,000 IQ test results by researchers from the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in Norway reveals the Flynn effect, a steady uptick in I.Q scores from the early Twentieth Century to the mid Nineteen Seventies, rapidly declined for those born from 1975 to 1991 in a extensive study spanning thirty nine years from 1970 to 2009, and rolled out in four other countries.
The results showed a turning point for the Flynn effect for those born post-1975, with a 7 point reduction in IQ scores per generation every ten years.
What’s interesting is researchers observed IQ drops occurring within actual families, between fathers, brothers and sons — meaning decreasing I.Q’s aren’t due to shifting demographics as originally thought.
It seems IQ tests haven’t adapted to measure modern intelligence; rather the tests favor a formally taught reasoning of the past that may be less emphasized in contemporary education or young people’s lifestyles.
Intelligence researchers also make a distinction between fluid and crystallized intelligence, with crystallized intelligence the stuff people are taught and trained in, while fluid intelligence is the ability to see new patterns and use logic to solve problems.
But as its been pointed out elsewhere something can be done about the first but fluid intelligence requires reasoning skills so people have to be taught HOW to think before they CAN think,so maybe a re-think is in order.
Post modernists might adopt a tongue-in-cheek attitude to the findings with something like; “the implication here is that it’s not us that are at fault but the IQ tests.
So until scientists exploit some of their fluid intelligence to make a major breakthrough in what’s really going on, we, and our lower IQ's may never know for sure.”
Alternately they can admit to missing the mark by realizing just maybe they NOT the ones marching in step to the tune of the band but the only ones not in sync with the rest.
